This week's links - deconstructing Limp Bizkit and Download

Stop. Being. Tits - awesome article from @Eve_Barlow about depressing, rather coercive culture of boob-flashing at Download. 

"I’m not going to paint a picture of rapey tragedy - some of the girls were up for it (if you consider Lisbeth Salander in The Girl With A Dragon Tattoo up for it) but many looked hesitant, almost reluctant and caved into flasherdom at the very last second."

It's good to know someone else - with a considerably bigger readership than me - is flagging up that while metal may be awesome it maybe needs to resit feminism 101 at some point.

And more Download, with a review by Bryce (AKA @Wreckferretzero) parts one and two. 

"On Kyuss: Song. Silence (to get their breath back & drink water). Song. Silence. Song. etc... He did say thank you just as he left the stage. That was it."

 

And finally Richard Warrell (AKA @TheRamblingElf) deconstructs nu-metal through a highly enjoyable academic analysis of Break Stuff by Limp Bizkit

"Instead of offering a full-fledged alternative culture for audiences to immerse themselves in, Limp Bizkit’s nu-metal sound left its ideological definition open and vague, defining itself only as being in opposition to many mainstream, conformist ideals, but not offering any alternative approach."

Somewhere right now, Fred Durst is stroking his chin in ponder-satisfaction.

Metal week guest post - Stephan reviews Download Pt 2

Stephan Burn is a far better and more diligent writer than I will ever be.You can read his Endless Realms blog and find him on Twitter at @onlystephan. He filed this report from the muddy trenches of last weekend's Download festival.

Saturday:

Halestorm were pretty good, and one of the very few female fronted bands over the weekend. I wonder though whether that fact alone made them stand out in my head, because subsequent listens tells me they were outstanding in their field, but not in my headphones.

Black Veil Brides. Oh my, where do I start? This is what happens when a bunch of Hollywood, CA emos take up the metal baton and refuse to put it down again. Precious, affected, thin-skinned perma-victims. The music? Genero-metal.

Gun. One song. You know which one.

Steel Panther. Now, here I am in a bit of quandary and its name is ironic misogyny. Steel Panther stood out to me an incredible amount, not by their music but by their performance, their show that consisted of a very knowing playing up of (glam)rock stereotypes. Take The Darkness, throw away the subtlety (yes, I know), add the “Boobs! LOL!” mentality of a 15 year old boy and you have a band that tries to carefully balance on that razor’s edge of parody. 

They were fun, I was entertained a lot, they were a much-needed antidote to the over-bearing seriousness of the whole festival, but I am constantly reminded of the editor of one or other of the lad’s mags in the late 90s claiming they weren’t sexist, but merely being ironic. I didn’t buy it then either.

Theory of a Deadman? MMRRPP. Kids in Glass Houses? MMRRPP.

Biffy Clyro still haven’t learnt to speak to the crowd, bless them. I wonder if it’s painful, crippling shyness. Their set was dull too, compared to other times I’ve seen them.

You Me At Six, or You Meat 6 as they became due to a typo? MMRRPP.

We caught parts of Metallica from a distance. They were doing what Metallica do as only Metallica can do. Only more so.

Sunday

God I hated this day. We were kicked out of our campervan early on the weakest day of the festival and we ended up lurching from one disappointment to another. By this time I was metalled out, grumpy and wanted to go home and sleep.

Kyuss Lives, I barely registered as happening, though I do recall there was less interaction with the crowd than even Biffy Clyro. A talent they shouldn’t squander.

Black Label Society was METAL. Old men with beards and spikes and leather and a 15 minute guitar solo that actually put me into a coma for a while.

I went to see Ugly Kid Joe with Bryce, not because I’m a fan, but because Penny and Olly were going to see Lamb of God, who they both liked but were too hardcore for me. UKJ did exactly what you’d expect of them. I’m told the LoG Jam was very good though, if you were into that kind of thing.

Dropkick Murphys were fun and again were memorable for being different. When I heard the concept of metal/hardcore Irish battle-hymns, nobody needed to tell me they were from Boston. This bouncy, energetic band could perhaps be described as IRA-core, but, you know, in a good way. On subsequent listens though, post festival? Celtic Diaspora MMRRPP.

Rise Against: MMRRPP.

We caught a few minutes of Sabbath from a distance but weren’t enticed closer. Ozzy frequently called out to the audience that he couldn’t hear them. We nodded sagely and hoped that he’d be able to afford that hearing aid soon.

So that was Download for me. I did enjoy myself, for the most part, my irascible diatribe aside, but I’m unlikely to ever go back. Most of the bits that were fun were hanging out with my friends and the bits of Download that broke the sameness of Download. New bands that I might start listening to more? Probably Halestorm.

Penny will probably end up listening to more Marmozets, Lamb of God and Dropkick Murphy’s.

Bryce, I believe, is preparing his own review as I write this. (He is, and it's here in all its awesomeness - Tim)

Metal week guest post - Stephan reviews Download Pt 1

Stephan Burn is a far better and more diligent writer than I will ever be.You can read his Endless Realms blog and find him on Twitter at @onlystephan. He filed this report from the muddy trenches of last weekend's Download festival.

Download was never going to be a natural fit for me. Not ‘now me’ anyway; maybe when I was younger, but not now. Now I’m about as metal as tofu. Don’t get me wrong, I rock, I roll, I’ve even been known to loll around drunkenly. But moshing? Headbanging? No.

Aside: It actually struck me this morning that some stereotypical metal shares some of the same kind of slightly insecure machismo as stereotypical hip-hop. A similar amount of swaggering around, talking about your ‘bitches’ and how oppressed you are by The Man. No wonder each genre’s acolytes hate each other so much: “No, our blend of repression and oppression is superior to yours, yours is just noise!” I hear them both cry.

So, why did I go to a festival that was once much more descriptively called Monsters of Rock? Where the headliners were a band playing an entire album that had ceased to have meaning to me by the third listen, and a loose collective that can barely be called anything as cohesive as a band and can barely be recollected by its shambling leader? Sacrifice. Sacrifice, bloody loyalty and some bizarre notion of broadening my horizons. Also, I look good in black.

So there we were: Penny, the aluminium briquette to my tin foil; Bryce and Olly, hard rockers both. There were others, a supporting cast of local friends, Twitter followers and passers-by congratulating me on my pipe, but it was the four of us who looked a muddy field squarely in the eye while kicking it soundly in the shin.

The first impression I had was how very lucky we were to be in a campervan, especially one we didn’t have to pay for. Two campsites were aflood in mud and all suffered from sub-Somme conditions. According to a friend who worked the festival, 2000 people went home before day one was out due to weather and/or tent loss. On Friday night 500 people were put up in the shower rooms due to either having lost their tent or being unable to find it as the fields were unlit.

Then there was the ‘entertainment’. I’ll admit I’ve been spoilt by festivals like Glastonbury where there is non-band entertainment aplenty, partly facilitated by the fact that there is no separation between campsite and the music arena. Download has this balkanisation, but throws a sop to those wanting something to do between 11pm and 11am by providing The Village. Imagine Shyamalan’s blunder, but with more burger vans and a ‘comedy’ tent.

It was not permitted to bring alcoholic drinks into the arena, an inevitable effect of the fragile economics of the modern corporate-sponsored music festival. It meant that we had to queue to buy tokens at £4 each and then queue to trade these vouchers in for weak Tuborg or Magners. We were drinking, yes, but never in any danger of proximity to drunk.

After a page of rambling, you’ll be pleased to hear that I’m going to cover the music now, yes?

Friday:

We skipped the easy choices of Terrorvision and Europe, as we only knew one song apiece by these blasts from the past. Instead we opted for NOFX, the first of many modern metal/rap/rock/pop/punk (MMRRPP) outfits we saw that I enjoyed at the time but have now merged into one indistinguishable mess in my head.

Next up was a wandering expedition which chanced us on new, young band the Marmozets, who Olly liked and Penny loved. There was a lot of shouting, but it seemed heartfelt.

Next, a band I was actually looking forward to! This could well be because, while Chase and Status were a good opener for headliners The Prodigy, they were a controversial choice for Download as a whole. Seemingly they went down okay with the teeming masses, and I enjoyed them immensely in perhaps the least surprising event of the weekend.

Next up was The Prodigy, who did a better set than when I saw them last at Glastonbury, with more energy and revitalised songs. However Penny and I still left them after about an hour. There was nothing wrong with the performance, they were doing okay, but I think I could extrapolate the remaining 40 minutes in my head and doubt I’d have been very far from the truth. Solid, not exhilarating.

Pt 2 later this week - Saturday, Sunday and overall musings